Customer Reviews

John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What the lengthy reviews don't really touch upon is the writing style of the author. Maccabee is has a great touch -- light, breezy and able to turn deadly serious without a wisp of melodrama. The book is organized in short snippets, little windows into the world of the times. It is tempting to grab the book and just read one of the snippets. Good luck. I've been late to work, appointments, dinner, etc, too many times because I've gotten sucked in to "just reading one more". Certainly, it's tantalizing to know the places Maccabee describes firsthand as a St. Paul resident (imagine my surprise when I found that my office was once home to a huge underworld betting parlor!) I would guess that Maccabee's storytelling insticts would enthrall people from any geographic location.

The editorial reviews above pretty much say it all--I'll just add that this book was my expert guide around St. Paul on a snowy Sunday in December. It's a class act--well-written and slickly designed on glossy paper, with plenty of rare photos. If you're interested in Depression-era crime, all you have to do is buy this book from Amazon and a plane ticket to the Twin Cities.

The cops and robbers game was played differently in St. Paul in the '20's and '30's than in most American cities. That's because in St. Paul organized crime was largely controlled by the Police Department. Consequently, it became the headquarters for fugitive gangs who found refuge there until Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and the Barker-Karpis gang brought federal heat to the Twin Cities in 1934. The story of the "public enemies" who found sanctuary through local mobsters and police contacts in St. Paul is told in full glorious detail here for the first time, thanks to author Paul Maccabee's great research and his battle for the release of long buried FBI files. It's a must read for all gangster buffs.

Loved this book, I found out a lot of family history by reading this book!! Well written.

John Dillinger Slept Here is a great book, full of detailed history of St. Paul gangster activity from the 1920's and 30's. A long time history buff, I started to get curious about St. Paul's role in the gangster era after reading Steven Thayer, and even more interested after taking the local gangster tour--only to find out that the gangster tour appears to have been taken from the pages of Maccabee's book. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

You don't have to be from St. Paul to enjoy this book. It is one of my favorite Prohibition-Depression era gangster books. You got your Dillinger, Nelson, Barkers and the rest of the marquee names but then you also have Verne Miller, Holden & Keating and a vast array of others including the home growns like Dapper Dan Hogan, Leon Gleckman, the Gleeman Bros. One generally thinks of Chicago and New York City as the gangster paradises but the system St. Paul had in place proves otherwise. The treasure trove of photos is worth the cover price alone.

This is a great read for anyone who lives or works in St. Paul or just loves history.

Tight focus on the subject, the place and the people makes this history/tour guide fascinating and hard to put down. But it, then visit St. Paul.

This book certainly delivers in that it's a factual depiction of the vice and corruption which existed in the gangland haven of St. Paul, Minnesota, during the Twenties and Thirties. If you think you'd be at all interested in the subject matter, then by all means "John Dillinger Slept Here" is for you. However, I bought this book more or less based on the glowing descriptions put forth in prior online reviews and, from a strictly personal standpoint, I expected more and was somewhat disappointed. There is, however, an interesting profile of sheriff-turned-criminal Verne Miller, who engineered what went down in the annals of crime as the bloody "Kansas City Massacre," and the author does fill in the gaps regarding the fatal shooting by St. Paul police of Dillinger gang remnant Homer Van Meter in August, 1934. For these alone it's probably worthwhile reading.

The book is a snoozer. Makes me wonder if the author got carried away with his parasitical attachment to the characters he embellished upon enough to blackmail the above reviewers. Really, don't bother.